on doing All the Things.

All posts filed under “style”

Check out those demon eyes. Clearly I was born to be doing this, right?

Like the internet needs another person blogging photos of their outfits. Ugh, I hate myself already.

Yesterday was my first day working from home (and by working I mean supervising movers and figuring out how to squeeze all my crap into my 10′ x11′ office), and I figured I’d celebrate by documenting my last week of leaving-the-house clothes. (Ok, if you’ve been following the weather in NY you’ll notice it was my technically my second to last week’s wardrobe.) Obviously, I’m already getting SO much DONE.

It was actually oddly fun and relaxing taking these by myself with a tripod. Click 10 sec timer, try to look fierce, fail miserably, repeat. I might make this a regular thing to motivate myself to continue dressing thoughtfully. (Even if it’s just in one of FOUR pairs of Uniqlo legging pants I just bought. They’re seriously that awesome. Work from home pants, what what.)

I was pretty proud of this week’s outfits, especially in light of the unseasonably cold temperatures (I don’t know how to dress for 70’s) and fact that I’ve been doing a lot of manual labor at work. There’s a solid color scheme going on, and I think this would make for an excellent vacation wardrobe, as it all can be mixed and matched and repeated ad infinitum.

This is the face of someone who’s not usually productive before 9am.Top: Target?Shorts: ExpressShoes: Keds

So last week I wore what I thought was a relatively conservative outfit to work:

On the way to the train, walking down my sleepy suburban main street, I got tailed by 2 20-something dudes in an SUV yelling things at me that I thankfully couldn’t hear. This is so uncommon blue that for a minute I thought I had dropped something before I realized what was going on.

Then when I was getting off the train in the city an older man with a glint of serial killer in his eye got all up in my face squeezing by (when there was plenty of room) and breathed, “hey sexy” at me so quietly I thought I was imagining things.

Later on, one of the crowd of random workers who hangs out on our office buildings steps attempted to say hello. It was actually polite, and he probably meant well, but by then I’d had it.

This day had me thinking in circles about women and objectification, and feeling threatened, and how white tights are apparently more sexual than black, and what exact level of dowdiness one must wear to be left alone. I thought about the models I see being gawked at openly, and sometimes approached and harassed. I thought about the women who aren’t so fortunate as to have things left at a gawk or even a grope. I thought a lot about how when we aren’t sartorially “asking for it,” we are still apparently deserving of it.

And mostly, I wondered how we can handle these situations in such a way that tells the perpetrator that their behavior is NOT okay, without potentially risking our safety in the process. Is this even possible?

Trying to squeeze massive amounts of post-honeymoon laundry back into my closet, resulted in some feeble attempts at an equally massive wardrobe purge.

Since the cold hard reality of having to bring all the crap we collected and brought to the wedding back to our house, I’ve been feeling purge-y. Most days I just want to throw it ALL out. These thoughts line up nicely with Operation Work from Home (more on that later), as the super scary final bedroom of crap needs to be cleaned out to make room for my office/warehouse.

BUT, and this is a big one—I know myself. And I know I, despite every tip I have ever read in a magazine, I will regret throwing out something and it’ll be crushing. And life will go on and all of that, but it will feel like a little piece of my heart ended up in the trash. I will end up crying over a coconut. (Yes, that has actually happened, but it’s another story for another day.)

Sooo…instead of tossing out all my clothes, I’m declaring a moratorium on buying new ones. I was bad last year, I had disposable income for the first time in a long time, I was able to pay for a wedding and a honeymoon and clothes and shoes and bags, dammit.

Except now there are other things I want more. Like some money in the bank. The missing pieces that will make our house complete—like a kitchen. Lots more traveling.

So I’m limiting my purchases to things I have been wanting for quite some time—like a sweater I almost bought 3 times on Swirl that’s now half price on Ebay, or things that are super functional and will improve my day-to-day life—like maybe some new winter boots.

My goal is to wean myself down to a third of my previous monthly spending over the next few months.

And ideally, shopping my closet will make me face up to what I do love and what I really, truthfully, would never ever miss.

I’m taking a break from the intensive invite DIY that is our living room right now to brave the mosquitos in the yard, sip some tequila and blog.

Ahhh.

Breathe.

A few weeks ago Scott helped me to brush up my rusty photoshop skillz and learn to make an inspiration board. I picked our honeymoon (because let’s face it, it’s all I want to think or talk about) as a subject, and I was really pleased with the results:

1… Technically, we’re going to be based in Atrani, not Amalfi, but it’s only a 2km difference, and “Amalfi Honeymoon” had a nicer ring to it.

With the exception of the super-cute Keds (though I’m not sure how well they’ll fair on uneven Amalfitane scalinatelle—staircase streets), none of this awesomeness will be in my suitcase, but I’m slowly curating my own inspiration-board-worthy honeymoon wardrobe…

Despite the fact that I’m pretty ridiculously easy to identify and track down IRL, I still have issues about The Grid, The Man, and The Government. Namely, that I would like them to not be all up in my shit. I know it’s like Mel-Gibson-in-Conspiracy-Theory paranoid, but I do have some unfortunate psychology tendencies in this area, that may or may not extend to being ethically against marriage as a civil contract.

But I digress.

I decided to introduce y’all to my less than super-adorable face today, before posting our engagement pics tomorrow, for a very good reason. Said pics are hands down the best photographs ever taken of myself (even counting the super-adorable phase I went through at age 3), and I think the before and after is wonderfully illustrative of what a shower, some make up, good lighting, and an even better photographer can do for one’s usual slumming around the house self.

I decided, in my typically procrastinative fashion, to pick out what I was going to wear for our engagement shoot at 11pm the night before. Mentally, I had gotten so far as to decide it would be a dress (80% of what I wear is dresses), and as it was forecasted to be about 50 degrees in mid-May, tights and some kind of sweater/jacket options were in order. And shoes that I could walk [a lot] in.

I worked backwards and settled on black mary janes for cuteness and comfort and paired with black footed tights (because as much as I wear footless tights all the time, I think they look slightly awkward). Next up was the dress:

Anna Sui for Target dress

…with my khaki trench…

…and with my favorite $3 target cardigan

H&M red dress

…with striped KnitWit hoodie.

(Not an hour after this pic was taken, this hoodie died (dyed?) in my hand wash basin, as I, diligently following the instructions on the hang tag, submerged it in warm water. Despite the fact that I’ve successfully hand washed 2 previous KnitWit hoodies, this one was not having it and is currently 3 shades of gray and still hidden in our hall closet drying rack. This was the point in the evening that crying occurred, and there was much consolation from #TBCB=Travel Brigade of Cyber Bridesmaids on Twitter. Lesson learned? Never leave laundry for midnite the night before, and always err on the side of Dryel.)

Philip Lim for Target

(Are we sensing a theme here?)

And the big winner. H&M and leopard.

Mostly because it spins well.

While I would wholeheartedly do not recommend going through your entire wardrobe at midnight the night before, it was actually kind of fun. Despite the late hour, and being several beers in (or because of it?), Scott was fairly helpful and much silliness ensued…

Nicole’s “makeover” was less of an intervention and more of a roast, as it was her birthday weekend, and she had her sister and several friends over who were eager to dig into the most embarrassing items in her closet. Luckily, I forgot to photograph those, though you can get an idea by checking out the orange terry-cloth dress in the background of the photo below.

I’ve known Nicole since the 7th grade, and back then she was known for wearing psychedelically-patterned tights with clashing dresses. The closest she gets to that these days is the well-worn purple striped dress pictured above, as she has since become an accountant, and started dressing like one. Her favorite color is brown.

I tried to help her work with what she has [brown] in the two photos below, picking some of the better fitting items, and skewing them towards the cuter end of business casual with a cardigan.

Nicole’s Pinboard focuses on office-appropriate neutrals that can transition to after-work events: lots of cardigans for layering, her beloved brown with a few pops of color and fun patterns thrown in, and some comfortable but cute wedges and heels.

Either because it just never occurs to us, or because we’re not sure if we want to know the answers.

In my case, there were many things.

Now that it’s too late, I sometimes wonder if I would want to have the chance to ask those questions, or if I’m actually better satisfied with the mystique my mom so successfully created around her life pre-me.

Puerto Rico

July 1966

Having me at 39 in the 80’s, she painted a vague picture of a fulfilling life—of the 60’s and the 70’s, the NYC-slumming student nurse days dealing with lunatics at Bellevue, dancing at Studio 54, and traveling with her best friends.

Laura is a nursing student and yoga instructor. When I first met her she pretty much lived in yoga gear, so I thought she’d be a great guinea pig.

But she was a step ahead of me in the wardrobe building process, as she’d recently had a volunteering position that required “business casual,” which resulted in her having a pretty solid foundation of basics to build on.

These consisted of some great-fitting jeans and pants, leggings, dresses, skirts and neutral tops.

Ok, I’m gonna say it again, fit, fit, fit!! The difference in attitude between Laura trying on her favorite new pants for me and knowing they looked good, versus Kristin’s self-consciousness was palpable. I swear, if it fits right, it will make you feel good, no matter your shape or size! (Of course, finding things that fit right is not always easy.)

I helped Laura mix and match some of these existing pieces in new ways, and gave her some tips on fit about things of which she was unsure.

For her style board, I gave her some accessories that she could use to dress up her basics, as well as dresses and sweaters with pops of color that would go with the neutrals she already owns. And inspiration for her brown Frye motorcycle boots!